Frémont was then thirty-four years old. As the leader of three great exploring expeditions he had become not only famous, but a popular hero. He had done much for science. He had made the most accurate map of the region between the one hundred and fourth meridian and the Pacific. He had added a large collection of botanical, geological, and other specimens to the national museums. He was eager to resume explorations of routes to the Pacific, having decided to settle his family in California—upon the Mariposa estate, in the Sacramento Valley, which he had bought in 1847, before the discovery of gold, seventy square miles, for $3,000, "the only Mexican grant that covered any part of the gold regions."
Frémont's claims against the Government for expenses incurred in the conquest and defence of California, amounted to some $700,000, which was paid to him. Among those advocating the payment were Senators Benton, and Dix of New York. Twenty thousand copies of Frémont's map of Oregon and California were ordered by the Senate.
It was by no means in the rôle of a defeated man that he started out upon his fourth expedition, in the fall of 1848—when the gold fever was at its height—a venture of his own and Colonel Benton's; its object, a route to the Pacific by way of the Rio Grande. Thirty-two men were enlisted, picked men as before. It was a superb and costly outfit, no less than one hundred and twenty mules. Lacking Kit Carson for a guide, they were lost in crossing the Rocky Mountains, every mule and horse and one-third of the men perishing from cold or starvation. At last, as he wrote home, "the mules, huddled together in the deep snow, froze stiff as they stood and fell over like blocks." The freezing men recrossed the summit in retreat, some of them driven to cannibalism. Wading through the snow to the waist, the remnant reached the home of Kit Carson at Taos, N. M., where Frémont reorganized the expedition, reaching the Sacramento in the spring of 1849.
Litigation concerning his title to the Mariposa estate did not prevent Frémont from developing its mineral and agricultural resources. He engaged some twenty-eight Spaniards to work its gold mines upon shares. His prospects of boundless wealth were most flattering. The Pathfinder was now a millionaire, and in 1855 his title to Mariposa was established by the Supreme Court. Following his appointment in 1849 to run the boundary line between the United States and Mexico, the political party of the Territory seeking its admission as a free State, elected him to the United States Senate. Many honors were bestowed upon him at this time—the medal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, the Founders medal from the King of Prussia, an honorary membership of the Geographical Society of Berlin, etc.
In the California State election of 1851, Frémont stood with the Anti-Slavery party, opposed to the extension of slavery in free territories. He was defeated, and went to Europe with his family in 1852, where he was fêted by royalty generally. Mrs. Frémont, in her "Souvenirs of My Time," has given charming glimpses of this part of their life. Hearing that Congress had made appropriation for further surveys of great Western routes, Frémont hastened home in 1853, to explore by a fifth expedition, what he believed to be the most central and practicable route. This was his second private venture. He would follow the path he had lost when the guide led him astray on his fourth expedition. He would cross the Rockies at Cochetopa Pass, and that in winter.
He made the passage, but it was at the cost of frightful suffering; fifty days on frozen horse-flesh, days without even that; forty-eight hours without a morsel of food; the entire party barefooted in the snow; Frémont, in the hour of extreme peril on the storm-swept mountain-side, making his men take oath that, come what might, nothing should tempt them to cannibalism. Benton tells us how Frémont went straight to the spot where the guide had gone astray in 1848, and found safe and easy passes all the way to California, upon the straight line of 38° and 39°. Great railroads of to-day follow the line it took those starving and half-frozen men fifty days to pass in that winter of 1854. For three months nothing was heard from the party. Frémont's arrival in San Francisco was an ovation. "Europe lies between Asia and America," we read in his report; "build the road, and America lies between Europe and Asia.... The iron track to San Francisco will be the thoroughfare of the world."
The issues at stake in the presidential campaign of 1856 make that campaign the most important of any in the history of our country. "The question now to be decided," said Seward, "is whether a slave-holding class shall govern America or not." The nomination of John Charles Frémont as the candidate of the Republican party was hailed with enthusiasm at the North. The Civil War was impending. The lines between the defenders of slavery and its opponents were sharply defined. Frémont was the first nominee of the Republican party. The romance and adventure of his career, his upright life, the hero-worship of the Pacific coast, the antagonism of the South, gave the canvass a vitalizing force that his defeat by James Buchanan did not lessen, but simply changed into a new phase of strength. Frémont's popular vote was 1,341,000 against 1,838,000 for Buchanan and 874,000 for Fillmore (Know-Nothing). Frémont received 114 electoral votes, and Buchanan 174.
When the Civil War broke out, in 1861, Frémont was in Europe. He offered his services to the Government at once, and was appointed one of the four major-generals of the regular army, and given his choice of a command at the East or the West. He chose the West. "Who holds the Mississippi will hold the country by the heart," he said. His head-quarters were at St. Louis, where secession was rampant. "You must use your own judgment," wrote President Lincoln, "and do the best you can. I doubt if the States will ever come back." Frémont's policy differed from Lincoln's essentially; it lacked that patient, conciliatory spirit with the South which made it hard for many at the North to approve of the compromising policy of the Chief Executive, seeking to hold the neutral States from seceding. Frémont's hatred of the rebellion led him to deal with it just as he would have done with a mutiny on a perilous expedition. He proclaimed martial law. Rebels were to pay some penalty for rebellion—rebel newspapers were silenced—and what was the notable feature of Frémont's administration—the slaves of those in arms against the Government were declared emancipated; his emancipation proclamation antedating Lincoln's of September 22, 1862, by a little more than a year. But Frémont's policy was censured rather than approved by the country at large. Petty intrigues of officers in close relation with the Cabinet did much to defeat his plans. His fleet of gunboats was called a useless extravagance—his staff "the California Gang." His emancipation proclamation was pronounced premature and unwise by Lincoln, and revoked. Frémont again was the cause of an intense public partisanship, "Frémont's career at the West was brief," says "Patton's Concise History of the United States," "only one hundred days; but, being a man of military instincts and training, he showed in that time a sagacity which was not allowed fair practical development. In that brief time he was the first to suggest and inaugurate the following practices, then widely decried, but without which the war would not have been successfully concluded: the free use of cavalry (strongly opposed by General Scott and others); exchange of prisoners with the enemy; fortification of large cities, to allow armies to take the field; building of river gunboats for the interior operations at the West; and the emancipation of the slaves. In short, he contributed more than is generally credited to him." "To get rid of Frémont," says Major-General Sigel, "the good prospects and honor of the army were sacrificed to the jealousy of successful rivals." Frémont was relieved of his command in 1861, and shortly after appointed commander of the Mountain District of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, where he did most honorable service, Stonewall Jackson retreating before him after eight days' sharp skirmishing, ending in the battle of Cross Keys.
Upon the appointment of General Pope as Commander of the Army of Virginia, making him Frémont's superior officer, Frémont asked to be relieved; his request was granted.
A minority of the Republican party, the radical wing, opposed to the renomination of Lincoln in 1864, nominated Frémont as their candidate. He accepted, but finally withdrew. "Not to aid in the triumph of Lincoln," he said, "but to do my part toward preventing the election of the Democratic candidate." One of the Republican candidates would have to retire to save the party. Here is a subject for debating clubs: Was the interest of the country best served by Frémont's withdrawal from the canvass of 1864?